UN body won't "take over" the Internet—but it could hold back its progress.

There has been a lot of heated rhetoric about the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), which is wrapping up its meeting in Dubai this week. Last week, the US Congress unanimously declared its opposition to giving the UN body increased control over the Internet. Congress is prone to making melodramatic gestures, but even more sober-minded entities such as Google and Mozilla seem to agree that WCIT is a danger to the open Internet.

That's puzzling, because the ITU as an organization doesn't have any direct regulatory powers. It can't fine anyone or put them in jail for defying its rules. Moreover, the proposals under discussion at Dubai, including last week's draft by a coalition of authoritarian regimes and a Tuesday proposal by the ITU's chairman, don't give the Geneva-based ITU Secretariat new powers. They merely declare that "member states" shall have the power to regulate the Internet to promote security, fight spam, and so forth.

But the "member states" are sovereign nations. They've been regulating the Internet for years without the ITU's blessing and are going to continue doing so regardless of what is decided at the conclusion of this week's conference.

So why is there so much controversy over a treaty that will largely say governments have powers they're already wielding? A big reason is that in the Internet's consensus-based governance model, precedents and symbolism matter. The ITU can't force the world's governments to sign on to, or abide by, any treaty that's negotiated in Dubai this week. But if the world signs on to a treaty that purports to govern the Internet, it will help establish a precedent that the ITU is the appropriate forum for setting Internet standards.

For instance, right now, rates for carrying data are worked out through private negotiations in which both "ends" of the network bear a share of the cost. The nature of those negotiations could change if ITU were to endorse a "sender pays" rule, which we have argued is a bad idea.

The Internet already has standard-setting organizations that are inclusive and transparent, inviting participation from private companies, non-profits, and others with a stake in the Internet's future. The Internet's existing consensus-based standards-setting process works well.

In contrast, the ITU's deliberations are largely carried out behind closed doors, with only governments and major telecommunications incumbents invited to participate. There's no danger of a "UN takeover" of the Internet in the short term. But in the long run the ITU could emerge as a rival to the Internet's established standard-setting institutions. And that could harm the open Internet by politicizing the development of future Internet standards.

Rule by consensus

No single institution controls the network of networks we call the Internet. Most important decisions are made by individual network owners who negotiate the terms of interconnection between themselves. But certain organizations play a key role in setting standards and conventions that make the Internet run smoothly.

Probably the most important is the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the non-profit organization that runs the domain name system. It's important for the world's computers to have a unified domain name system, but ICANN's authority over that system is purely a matter of consensus. The organization can't compel anyone to pay attention to the root servers it controls. Yet the world does, in fact, pay attention to those servers.

Some nations resent ICANN's dominance. They perceive it, with some justification, as a US-centric institution. And the same point applies to other institutions, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force that sets key Internet standards. While these organizations are formally open to the world, their strong US ties raise suspicions in some world capitals that the organizations are biased in favor of Western interests.

Some governments also resent the implicit ideology of these organizations. Many Western engineers make technical decisions with an eye toward making surveillance and censorship difficult. That's a cause for dissatisfaction for authoritarian nations like China and Russia.

For all these reasons, US rivals would like to promote the emergence of alternative governance institutions. And they see the ITU, a government-dominated organization with a 150-year history of setting telecommunications standards, as the ideal candidate. Over time, they hope to build up the ITU as a rival to ICANN and the IETF—an alternative platform from which they can promote Internet standards they see as more congenial to their interests.

That's probably why the opening gambit of the United States was to propose that key aspects of Internet governance be excluded from the ITU negotiations. The US likes the status quo, and so they hoped to establish the precedent that the ITU isn't the right place to discuss Internet governance issues, reinforcing the legitimacy of the organizations who currently perform those functions.

The heated rhetoric of the ITU's critics is another key part of this strategy. It's hyperbole to warn of an imminent UN takeover of the Internet. But that hyperbole serves an important purpose: it ensures that any Internet-related provisions will emerge from the negotiating process tarnished by controversy.

What ultimately matters about this week's negotiations is less the specific proposals—none of which are going to significantly change how the Internet works—but how the process affects public perception of the ITU as an institution. If the treaty includes provisions related to the Internet, Russia, China, and other US rivals will portray it as a natural extension of the ITU's existing jurisdiction over telecommunications. Western powers have pushed for a treaty that doesn't focus on the Internet. And if they fail to exclude the Internet from whatever deal the ITU approves, then they'll likely portray the treaty as an illegitimate power grab.

That drama continued to play out late on Wednesday night as the ITU chairman took the "temperature" of the assembled delegates on an Internet-related resolution. A majority of nations voted for the resolution, but the US and its allies objected that they had been surprised by the informal vote. They also accused the chairman of reneging on his promise to proceed on the basis of consensus rather than majority rule.

The US hopes to preserve the "home court advantage" provided by the existing, open Internet governance institutions by preventing the emergence of the ITU as a rival standards-setting institution. Advocates of a free and open Internet and opponents of authoritarianism should hope that they succeed.

Timothy B. Lee
Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times. Emailtimothy.lee@arstechnica.com//Twitter@binarybits

I'm not sure the ITU will have much better luck taking over the Internet than ISO did 30 years ago. Even with the US Government mandating the OSI protocol suite in place of the TCP/IP suite, the OSI suite died in the real world, leaving only a few vestiges behind to fill gaps in the TCP/IP ecosystem.

There's a lot of user pressure to use things that work, rather than what's mandated, and the TCP/IP suite is remarkably resilient -- it's hard to make it stop working unless you can stop the end-system operating systems from using it.

DNS and the routing infrastructure are somewhat more vulnerable to government tampering. But they're also vulnerable to unilateral ISP tampering, which scares me as much or more.

Many Western engineers make technical decisions with an eye toward making surveillance and censorship difficult. That's a cause for dissatisfaction for authoritarian nations like China and Russia.

But, at the same time, aren't US entities also pushing for the same wiretap capabilities they currently have for phone lines? Or, is it that Western engineers are simply making it more difficult for CERTAIN nations to surveil and censor? I think that's the bigger issue. The US wants to be able to dictate internet law for other nations, while not necessarily abiding by the same rules themselves.

Many Western engineers make technical decisions with an eye toward making surveillance and censorship difficult. That's a cause for dissatisfaction for authoritarian nations like China and Russia.

But, at the same time, aren't US entities also pushing for the same wiretap capabilities they currently have for phone lines? Or, is it that Western engineers are simply making it more difficult for CERTAIN nations to surveil and censor? I think that's the bigger issue. The US wants to be able to dictate internet law for other nations, while not necessarily abiding by the same rules themselves.

The U.S. based organizations just want surveillance capabilities. They don't give a damn about censorship.

US and it's western allies... that's beyond vague. What about the EU were they unanimous in their support or just poland?

The U.S., Canada and the entire EU is against this move. I'm not sure what other nations might be against it, but when you have half the western world against this - I'm not sure what chances are that this measure will pass.

I wouldn't call the IETF a US-centric organization. It started in the US, but that was decades ago. These days, most participants are from other countries. Not that it matters much, because nobody goes to the IETF to represent their country.

At the end of the day I honestly think it would have been better to have some standards. I know it's more common in the US, but in Canada most people aren't aware they can just buy a cable/dsl modem instead of renting it. Heck most stores don't carry them either. No one thinks twice when buying a telephone.

At the end of the day I honestly think it would have been better to have some standards. I know it's more common in the US, but in Canada most people aren't aware they can just buy a cable/dsl modem instead of renting it. Heck most stores don't carry them either. No one thinks twice when buying a telephone.

Before 1984 they did. Or rather, they didn't. You used a Bell System telephone or you wrote a letter

At the end of the day I honestly think it would have been better to have some standards. I know it's more common in the US, but in Canada most people aren't aware they can just buy a cable/dsl modem instead of renting it. Heck most stores don't carry them either. No one thinks twice when buying a telephone.

Before 1984 they did. Or rather, they didn't. You used a Bell System telephone telephone or you wrote a letter

Exactly what I was about to say. It use to be illegal to own a phone in the USA.

Many Western engineers make technical decisions with an eye toward making surveillance and censorship difficult. That's a cause for dissatisfaction for authoritarian nations like China and Russia.

Skirge01 wrote:

But, at the same time, aren't US entities also pushing for the same wiretap capabilities they currently have for phone lines? Or, is it that Western engineers are simply making it more difficult for CERTAIN nations to surveil and censor? I think that's the bigger issue. The US wants to be able to dictate internet law for other nations, while not necessarily abiding by the same rules themselves.

Note that many engineers don't go all the way to make protocols pass through the Iranian firewall. Simplicity and compatibility, i.e. practicality, trump annoying "USA enemy states".

The USA does and will do everything it can to keep host naming, ICANN, under government control. Just look at what happened when a prominent member of ICANN moved the root to his personal server.

The IETF, on the other hand, is an international task force. Western, perhaps, but I can join online if I care to and fly to meetings—as long as I write in and speak English. Thanks to the British and US Air forces, I already do.

There's always the US Navy bootstrapped TOR project, irrespective of ITU—or possibly the US federal government.

As far as Iran/China/Russia are concerned, patents might as well be "how-to" manuals.

Wish they were - then patents would generally be useful as opposed to in a few exceptional cases. It seems to me having read a few, that they are mostly written by lawyers for the benefit of lawyers. That is likely to suit patent officers who collect more patent application fees. Can't see any engineering logic in those I've read recently in the sense they describe what is highly obvious in the most obscure manner imaginable, and as an engineering educator, I simply can't imagine using this source of disinformation for any educational purpose.

I think engineers from these countries are likely to do much better reading open source software source code than patents any day. They'll learn much, much more with much less effort and without the nausea.

The profession of software patent officer or lawyer is a perfect example of Bernard Shaw's saying that "every profession is a conspiracy against the laity".

I've actually attended ITU meetings, which I suspect puts me further ahead than most people here. Mine were on telecommunications and disability, specifically on future standards for enabling deaf people to partipicate in telecommunications - I may be in a position to contribute further work towards this standard over the next year or so.

ITU is labyrinthine - it took me nearly a year to begin to get a handle on how our tiny tiny subset of it works. So much of the donkey work is done by volunteers and more or less these who can muster the interest / motivation / free time to get involved. In that respect, it's rather like reports I've read of how the IETF works.

In the UK / Europe the issue of deaf access to telecoms (relay services etc ) is being held back by the big telecos who don't want to pay for a successful access service on the lines of the US relay model. This US model,while it has some fraud issues, has on the whole been an outstanding success and is one of the few modern things that US telecommunications can be proud of.

Hence my involvement in the ITU to try to bring this in through the back door. Bizzarely the telecos are trying to force a 'socialist' model where they decide what's suitable for deaf people and we have to suck it up. But we are requesting the ITU to follow UN convention guidelines and create a standard for deaf access using the US 'capitalist' model where deaf people can be customers and have freedom of market choice to use the relay service that best meets their needs and budget. Topsy turvy world!

(Posted late at night so apologies if my explanation is difficult to follow, but that's ITU for you.)

In the UK / Europe the issue of deaf access to telecoms (relay services etc ) is being held back by the big telecos who don't want to pay for a successful access service on the lines of the US relay model. This US model,while it has some fraud issues, has on the whole been an outstanding success and is one of the few modern things that US telecommunications can be proud of.

Can you elaborate on this a little bit? Do you mean TTY services? I live in the US and know a number of hearing impaired individuals. They all use smartphones and from what I can tell use that to greatly enhance their lives by communicating textually.

Many Western engineers make technical decisions with an eye toward making surveillance and censorship difficult. That's a cause for dissatisfaction for authoritarian nations like China and Russia.

But, at the same time, aren't US entities also pushing for the same wiretap capabilities they currently have for phone lines? Or, is it that Western engineers are simply making it more difficult for CERTAIN nations to surveil and censor? I think that's the bigger issue. The US wants to be able to dictate internet law for other nations, while not necessarily abiding by the same rules themselves.

The U.S. based organizations just want surveillance capabilities. They don't give a damn about censorship.

Tell that to all the sites which have received farcical DMCA takedown notices.

As a consumer of both RFC's and ITU standards, god help us all if the ITU takes it over.

The IETF RFC's are a on a public website, and a joy to read. That might have something to do with the IETF requiring you actually implement the spec before they accept the RFC.

The ITU's standard look like they were paid by the word, hide implementation details in the fine print or omit them entirely so the only hope is to try every conceivable way until one works, make it impossible for anybody but members of the club to contribute, then demand you pay for them.

The US, for better or worse, is a far better choice for governance of the internet with regards to free speech.

Look at the topics being discussed - deep packet inspection and filtering at country borders - brought to you by countries such as Iran, China and Russia.

You're joking right? The US has the most sophisticated packet inspection and logging system of them all. Everything is sniffed and stored for later use. The only difference is they aren't currently trying to censor the internet, well except for all those attempts to insert the framework for censorship under the guise of copyright enforcement.

Many Western engineers make technical decisions with an eye toward making surveillance and censorship difficult. That's a cause for dissatisfaction for authoritarian nations like China and Russia.

But, at the same time, aren't US entities also pushing for the same wiretap capabilities they currently have for phone lines? Or, is it that Western engineers are simply making it more difficult for CERTAIN nations to surveil and censor? I think that's the bigger issue. The US wants to be able to dictate internet law for other nations, while not necessarily abiding by the same rules themselves.

The U.S. based organizations just want surveillance capabilities. They don't give a damn about censorship.

Tell that to all the sites which have received farcical DMCA takedown notices.

It's censorship when there is no plan for a trial and there is a threat of lawsuits...... meanwhile places like Google can do whatever they want with impunity because they are far too big to sue.

I just can't believe for such a "democratic" nation that an overwhelming majority is being criticized. Same thing with other democratic nations, it only becomes a dictatorship to them when they don't align themselves with US oil interests! Viva Chavez! The last crusader for human oil rights!

It's censorship when there is no plan for a trial and there is a threat of lawsuits...... meanwhile places like Google can do whatever they want with impunity because they are far too big to sue.

I just can't believe for such a "democratic" nation that an overwhelming majority is being criticized. Same thing with other democratic nations, it only becomes a dictatorship to them when they don't align themselves with US oil interests! Viva Chavez! The last crusader for human oil rights!

I have read this several times now and cannot figure out what you are talking about. What are you talking about?

The US, for better or worse, is a far better choice for governance of the internet with regards to free speech.

Look at the topics being discussed - deep packet inspection and filtering at country borders - brought to you by countries such as Iran, China and Russia.

Yeah, the US is corrupt, inefficient, and greedy but they're not going to dump nerve gas on you for posting something they don't like on Facebook. You might go to jail and have your life ruined but your chances are still better there than some of the other countries I can think of that probably liked this idea.

Besides, the UN is already known to be toothless. Why add more red tape and politics when there's no benefit?

Many Western engineers make technical decisions with an eye toward making surveillance and censorship difficult. That's a cause for dissatisfaction for authoritarian nations like China and Russia.

But, at the same time, aren't US entities also pushing for the same wiretap capabilities they currently have for phone lines? Or, is it that Western engineers are simply making it more difficult for CERTAIN nations to surveil and censor? I think that's the bigger issue. The US wants to be able to dictate internet law for other nations, while not necessarily abiding by the same rules themselves.

The U.S. based organizations just want surveillance capabilities. They don't give a damn about censorship.

Tell that to all the sites which have received farcical DMCA takedown notices.

And that has what to do with censorship? Oh that's right, fuck all.

Seriously? You don't think that issuing a DMCA takedown notice on legitimate sites with legal purposes is censorship? A child dancing to a song in the background on Youtube? Political ads? Rojadirecta? Diebold?

Yeah, the US is corrupt, inefficient, and greedy but they're not going to dump nerve gas on you for posting something they don't like on Facebook. You might go to jail and have your life ruined but your chances are still better there than some of the other countries I can think of that probably liked this idea.

Besides, the UN is already known to be toothless. Why add more red tape and politics when there's no benefit?

The UN most certainly is not toothless, at least when it comes to its specialized agencies. While it may be true that the UN has a difficult time conducting military interventions, for example, or compelling member states to provide human rights, this has rather little bearing on the activities of the WHO, UPU, or, most pertinently to this article, the ITU. Most of these organizations are somewhat independent of the main UN structure, sometimes by virtue of having actually preexisted the UN itself (the ITU was founded in 1865, for instance), and have at least some degree of influence in their field.

For an example, the ITU is responsible for regulating the allowed transmission frequencies and orbital positioning of geosynchronous communications satellites, due to the relatively limited room available for such satellites and their usual international usage. So far as I am aware, this regulation has been reasonably effective in actually dictating where people locate their satellites, and it isn't unreasonable to suppose that over time the ITU might eventually take on a similar role in regulating the Internet.